Visiting a volcano in Greece

Another early morning start…this one for a ferry trip to the Greek island of Santorini. We had booked to stay for five days in Santorini. Santorini is famous for its villages perched on the top of cliffs formed by a volcano, but we actually stayed at a little black sand beach on the other side – Perissa Beach. We were right at the end of the season, and so a lot of shops, restaurants and hotels at Perissa Beach had closed for the year. The weather was in the early 20’s – just warm enough for swimming when the sun was shining! Our first couple of days were spent swimming, sleeping and trying to shake off the cold I had picked up along the way.

Perissa Beach

Swimming – this was actually at the end of our trip once I was better!

By Wednesday we were feeling more energetic and so took a bus through to the main town, Fira to take a tour. Once there we had to get to the old port at the bottom of 588 steps. You could take a gondola, donkey or walk. We decided to walk, but this turned out to be a hazardous decision – the steps were slippery from a combination of rain showers and donkey droppings, and I fell twice. The donkeys themselves were taking tourists up and down the hill, and a couple of times we came very close to being squashed against the wall!

Donkeys – the hidden menace

However, we finally made it off the fragrant steps and onto our boat trip – a tour that took us over to the active volcano Nea Kameni (visible in the top photo) to climb to the top, then went over to Palia Kameni, where we dived off our sailboat into the ocean and swam over to warmish hot springs to relax.

Looking up to Fira

View of the crater – smoke was coming out!

Looking out to Santorini – Oia in the background

Warm-ish springs!

When we got back to Fira we decided to give the steps another shot and walked up them – a fairly challenging prospect since the sun was beating down and we had run out of water! We definitely enjoyed our souvlaki and gelato at the top as we explored Fira before heading back to Perissa.

Yeah…these took me awhile. Most people paid for the donkey or gondola!